Music entertainment at parties usually involves a Disc Jockey (DJ), a person who selects the music to be played and who possibly also talks to the audience between songs. For example, the DJ might share comments about his selection of songs, encourage the audience to dance more actively or comment on the dance energy and style of the audience. The DJ can be of huge importance for the attractiveness of an event: Discos usually advertise their events with the famous names of the (guest) DJs.
Not for every party a famous DJ is available, and in some cases it is desirable to replace the human DJ by an electronic equivalent. Such a method was presented for example in U.S. Pat. No. 6,888,457, which discloses a portable apparatus for monitoring the reaction of a user to a performance, containing one or more sensors for detecting an indirect user response to the performance and a user interface enabling the user to provide a direct user response to the performance. A processor in the portable apparatus is programmed to provide a user reaction signal comprising a combination of the indirect user response and the direct user response to the performance. This user reaction signal may be transmitted to a remote apparatus. A monitoring system using such portable apparatus and a music playing system using such a monitoring system are also described.